Question

I have a 3D array of bytes in c# which I have read from a bitmap:

byte[w, h, 3]

What is the easiest and more performance-friendly way of reshaping this array into 2D (linear) form?

byte[w*h, 3]

In other words I want to keep number of channels (features) but in a linear shape (rather than a square shape)

Let me try to illustrate input and desired output:

input:

|(r1,g1,b1)    (r2,g2,b2)    (r3,g3,b3)|
|(r4,g4,b4)    (r5,g5,b5)    (r6,g6,b6)|
|(r7,g7,b7)    (r8,g8,b8)    (r9,g9,b9)|

note that arr[0, 0, 0] = r1, arr[0, 0, 1] = g1, arr[0, 0, 2] = b1, etc..

and output:

|(r1,g1,b1)    (r2,g2,b2)    (r3,g3,b3)    (r4,g4,b4)    (r5,g5,b5)    (r6,g6,b6) ...|

Answer 1

This seems to work fine, because the array is already in the right shape in memory:

var a = new byte[2,  2, 2] { { { 1, 2 }, { 3, 4 } }, { { 5, 6 }, { 7, 8 } } };
var b = new byte[2 * 2, 2];

//sizeof(byte) is obviously 1 here, but I put it there for documentation
Buffer.BlockCopy(a, 0, b, 0, a.Length * sizeof(byte));

---

For those interested: As for what to do if you really want to transpose a 2D array into 1D:

byte[,] a = {
    {1, 2},
    {3, 4},
    {5, 6},
};
var b = new byte[a.GetLength(1) * a.GetLength(0)]; //Transpose

const int R_STRIDE1 = 8; //Tune this for your CPU
const int C_STRIDE1 = 8; //Tune this for your CPU

//You should hoist the calls to GetLength() out of the loop unlike what I do here
for (int r1 = 0; r1 < a.GetLength(0); r1 += R_STRIDE1)
for (int c1 = 0; c1 < a.GetLength(1); c1 += C_STRIDE1)
    for (int r2 = 0; r2 < R_STRIDE1; r2++)
    for (int c2 = 0; c2 < C_STRIDE1; c2++)
    {
        var r = r1 + r2;
        var c = c1 + c2;
        if (r < a.GetLength(0) && c < a.GetLength(1))
            b[c * a.GetLength(0) + r] = a[r, c];
    }

This should take advantage of caching in the CPU. I have only performed limited testing on this — it could still be slow. Try tweaking it if it is.
You can (somewhat non-trivially) extend this to a 3D array.